And then she was through, throwing off the disorientation like the expert she was. There were armored men in the chamber, most crouched by the several entrances to the room, while an officer stood near the hole and saluted her and Watcher.
“We have the area secure, my Lord. My Lady. Out to the main corridor.”
Pandi stepped out of the way as she listened to the man, allowing the last platoon to come through. After the last man stepped out the wormhole collapsed on itself. That meant the last wormhole was being opened, this one near the main entrance to the palace, normally the most heavily patrolled area, now guarded by a skeleton crew as troops had been sent to other areas to deal with the then extant threats.
“I don’t want him getting away,” said Watcher to the Lt. Colonel. “I would prefer him alive, but will accept him dead if there’s no other way. But we must have him, and we must have proof that he has gone down, so we can force a surrender of his military.”
“Yes, my Lord,” said the Colonel. “I will put out the order.”
“Then let’s get going,” Watcher said to Pandi, moving for the entrance of the room that led toward the center of the building. A squad moved ahead of them, while two more fell in behind, all the troopers alert and ready for anything.
They moved through the already secure region quickly, depending on the other platoons to have the area swept of threats. Coming to the edge of that area, where the corridor branched into a major passageway that was covered with rich wallpapers, paintings and mirrors, the first commandos went to a knee. A moment later a pair moved into that corridor and ran forward twenty meters, coming to a stop, again on a knee, while another team moved past them. The rest of the squad moved out, following behind the two alternating pairs, while some of the security platoon moved the other direction, sweeping to secure the rear and make sure nothing was trying to get by them from that direction.
“We’ve secured the garage and hangar, my Lord,” came a call over the com that Pandi also received.
Watcher walked lightly despite his massive set of armor, following the first squad. Pandi slaved into his feed, seeing what he was looking at. A schematic of the palace was up on his HUD, with several secret doors and escape paths, newly discovered. “I want these routes blocked off, now.”
“Yes, my Lord,” came back the transmission from another company commander. “We will….”
The static that came across the com was loud enough to hurt Pandi’s sensitive ears. All but local com went down, and Watcher was cursing over that.
“What the hell is going on?” asked Pandi, as the schematic of the palace blurred on her HUD.
“Static generator,” said Watcher in a growl. “They’re blocking our com signal.”
“How it that possible?” asked Pandi. Our tech is too advanced for them to interfere with, right?
“If they put enough power into it, anything is possible,” said Watcher, cycling through all the possible com channels and getting nothing.
“The schematic’s blurring too,” complained Pandi. “And the feed is getting interrupted by something.”
“EMP,” said Watcher, waving for the men to get low. “They’re hitting us with enough EMP to disrupt the microbots.”
“But, they’re shielded.”
“That they are,” said Watcher, shaking his armored head. “But nothing that small can be shielded completely. The paranoid son of a bitch.”
Just paranoid enough, thought Pandi, looking around, as if her eyes were going to spot anything that the others were missing. That was why her eyes caught sight of the red gems on the walls glowing with power, just before they let loose with blasts of lasers.
* * *
“I understand Admiral,” said Flight Captain Stephan Hertz, looking at the man in charge of all Confederation naval forces in the system on the holo. I sure as hell don’t like it, but I understand.
“I hate to send you unsupported into an attack, but I really don’t have any choice. And they will definitely not expect you. We’re vectoring probes to their most likely exit to provide you with a reference point.”
And we have to get within light minutes of the star to vector to that point, thought the Flight Captain, looking over the plot. That was one of the warnings he had received in training. Don’t get too close to strong gravity wells, and a main sequence star was strong enough.
“Just hit them hard, and then move on. With luck, you can get them again as they move into the system, and maybe forget about you.”
Hertz nodded again, thinking about what he could do. He had forty-one fast attack craft left after his second attack. And each ship had a total of two missiles left in their weapons’ compartments. At best he could kill eighty-two of the over seven hundred ships coming their way. And at best was not the way to think things out when it came to attacks. If we had the other wing maybe we could stop them. But the other wing was being ordered to support the Admiral’s task force, and he really couldn’t fault that decision.
“How much latitude do I have in choosing my course and approach?” he asked the Admiral, hoping that he had some.
“You can plot a course that avoids the gravity well, but I need you to get there before they can acquire us and launch.”
Which means we still get to take some risk, thought Hertz, nodding. He still didn’t like it, but the order had been given, and he would obey.
“Missile impact in eight minutes,” called out a voice from the Admiral’s bridge, and Hertz knew the senior officer had other things to worry about.
“Good luck, and may the Gods be with you,” said the Admiral.
The com went dead, and Hertz called up all of his ships on the wing commander’s link. “We’re going to attack the next force to enter the system,” he told his squadron and ship commanders. “You’re not going to like it, but here’s how it’s going to go down.”
* * *
“They’re in here,” called out a voice in the hall.
Tony Garcia cringed in the corner of his cell as he imagined what must be coming for him now. He hadn’t broken with all the physical torture they had thrown his way. But the pheromones of the Emperor had made him cooperate, and given the enemy everything he knew about the Opposition. The shame was overwhelming. The man had completely owned him, had broken him with one whiff of his scent.
The door to the cell slid open, the heavy steel sliding into the frame set in the stone wall. Someone ran up to his side and knelt down. Hands touched his shoulders.
“Tony. Tony, are you alright? We’ve come to get you out of here.”
“Freddie?” asked Garcia, opening his eyes and seeing his old friend and cell member, a man whose name he had given to the Emperor. “Oh, Freddie. Please forgive me. I gave them everything. I tried not to, but that bastard pulled it out of me with that damnable scent.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Tony? Who?”
“The Emperor. He came here, and asked me questions, and I told him everything. I told him about you. I’m so sorry, Freddie. I betrayed you, and all the others. I deserve to die.”
Tony opened his tear blurred eyes and looked into the face of his friend. “You need to get out of here, before they come and get you.” Tony noticed there were other people in the chamber, two by the door, both looking down at him. He tried to cringe back within himself. “Who are they?” he croaked. He noticed that the two beings, because one of them was not a human, were dressed in a thin flexible armor that shifted colors as it blended in with the shadows.
“They’re Pandora’s people, Tony,” said Santana, rubbing a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “They’ve come to free us. All of us. So you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“We need to go, Mr. Santana,” said the alien in a sibilant voice. “All the other prisoners have been freed, and we need to move out to find more targets.”
“You need to get up, Tony,” said Santana, holding his arm and helping him to rise. “This place won’t be safe once the commandos mo
ve out. So let’s go.”
Tony thought for a moment as he shuffled to the door. He was still not sure that this was real, or if these people were his friends. But did he have a choice? If they were enemies, they would take him where they wanted. And if they were friends?
“Tony,” yelled Katherine as he came out into the hall. She looked like he felt, but she was still able to move much better than he could. She walked to him and put her arms around him. “Isn’t it wonderful.”
“Where’s Jorge?” he asked, not really sure why he cared where the man was. After all, Jorge had spilled his guts without much in the way of persuasion. Or so the interrogators had told him.
“They took him away,” said Katherine in a choking voice. “I don’t know where, but he’s not here.”
Maybe they took him for experimentation and dissection, thought Tony with a slight smile.
“Can you get your people to a safe place?” asked the alien, a doglike creature that looked as dangerous as anything Tony had ever seen.
There were several civilians in the hallway now, all armed with military class projectile weapons, and some of them were handing out other equipment, rifles and pistols, to the more fit of the prisoners.
“Don’t you worry, Captain,” said Freddie, nodding to the alien. “You just get out there and take down the government. We’ll be just fine.”
The alien showed an alarming amount of teeth in a smile, nodding his head, then moved like a graceful shadow out of sight.
“What happened to the Latham woman?” asked Tony as he was supported between two other prisoners on the way out of the cell block.
“She freed the Watcher, and they brought an army in and attacked the Emperor’s forces.”
“And they’re doing good?” They stepped through the door to the cell block, and the stench of burning meat almost made him lose what little was in his stomach. The bodies of police and prison guards littered the area, many with large pieces of their bodies missing, smoke rising from holes through torsos and heads.
“I’d say they were doing very good,” said Santana with a smile, helping to guide him around one of the bodies. “Very good indeed.”
Garcia looked down at the dead face of the man looking up at him from the floor. It was the Chief Inquisitor, and the man looked like he had died horribly. He kicked the body, a weak strike, but still enough to make him feel better. “Get me someplace where I can rest up a bit, Freddie. I want to get in on the tail end of this thing.”
Chapter Thirty-one
The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.
Carl Sagan
Pandi felt something pushing her down as soon as the lasers struck. A beam still landed on her helmet with a shower of sparks, but the hand that pushed her down had moved her out of the way before the powerful flare of light had time to do more than superficial damage to her helmet. Another beam tried to track her, but Watcher, letting go of the top of her helmet, stepped in front of her and took the brunt of the light on his electromag field, bouncing the beam around him and into the wall.
The commandos around them moved as soon as the ambush was initiated. For some of them it would be the last moves of their lives, as beams from the walls sliced through their thinner armor as easily as the flesh underneath. One man lost an arm, the other his head, while the rest of the commandos pumped particle beams into the laser emitters, shattering one with each hit of hypervelocity protons. Their suits helped with their reaction time, though not as much as if they had been truly augmented, something that was planned for the future. The Maurids still moved in blurs, their normal reaction time the equal of low level augmentation. They dropped to all fours, the laser emitters on their shoulders automatically tracking targets as they swept their particle beam rifles to burn deep runnels through the walls.
Watched moved faster than Pandi had ever seen, totally in the zone, sliding into his element. The laser projectors on his shoulders and the two pistols in his hands tracked individual targets with the accuracy of a normal soldier aiming a single weapon. In a second he had destroyed four beam emitters. In two seconds twelve. And he continued to fire, moving down the corridor, his eyes picking out targets as soon as he serviced others.
“The hell with this,” said Pandi, leaping to her feet and running after him. A laser splashed from the electromag field of her suit, the second toughest piece of armor on this mission. She drew both her pistols and opened fire, not picking the targets off quite as fast as Watcher was, but still making a major dent in the enemy firepower. Behind her the commandos got to their feet and moved after, taking out the few lasers that she and Watcher had missed.
“Down,” yelled Watcher as he came to a crossing, dropping himself as a hypervelocity rocket came streaking over his suit to explode down the hall. His lasers started firing, visible through the smoke that was partially obscuring non-enhanced vision. He stayed on his belly while the two systems on his back rotated up on extending arms. Another hyperv flew by, this one a tumbling streak that had been hit by Watcher’s shoulder lasers and its forward grabbers taken out. The two units that were now deployed, heavy suit weapons, opened fire. One started sending out explosive shells at ten a second, while the other popped off a pair rockets.
“Clear,” he yelled, jumping up from his prone position and moving.
Pandi came around the corner behind him, the other commandos on her tail. The first thing she saw was the barricade that the Imperials had set up, manned by a full squad of troops, all dead. Shit, but he’s hell on wheels when he gets going.
Watcher pushed a set of metal boxes that made up part of the barricade out of the way and moved in a crouch down the corridor, taking the point for the moment. Pandi followed, looking at the dead men for a moment, ripped apart with shells and the explosions of rockets that had also ripped jagged holes in the wall with their shrapnel.
The schematic of the palace came back up, red spots indicating where known enemy strong points were located.
“We’re back in business,” said Watcher, waving the second squad of commandos, taking the place of the now depleted first, forward. “Let’s go take this asshole.”
* * *
That asshole was currently realizing that he had to get himself out of the palace if such was to be. The assault force was fighting its way past all of the ambushes and blocking strongpoints that had attempted to stop them. They seemed unstoppable. If only I had men like them, with the equipment they carried. He looked over at the squad that was currently arming itself from the armory that had been closest to his personal chambers. A very special armory, with very special equipment.
I will have to give Jackson another honor if we win this thing, he thought as the men checked their particle beam weapons. Jackson had grabbed Watcher’s armor and weapons when he had captured the man, and had brought them back to the capital with him. It didn’t take long to reverse engineer the beam weapons, and, while they had not been put into general manufacture, a hundred some odd test weapons had been produced, of which sixty were in this armory.
The men were also dressed in a much heavier battle armor than the rest of the security force. The armor was augmented heavy infantry battle armor, enhanced with panels of the same kind of material that Watcher’s armor was made of. They would probably still not be a match for the armor of the Confederation heavy infantry. But against lightly armored commandos?
“Your suit is ready, your Majesty,” called out one of the armorers.
Kitticaris walked forward with excited anticipation, his eyes locked on the suit of battle armor that stood on a corner dais in the room. It was the most advanced piece of equipment in the Empire. The original battle armor of Watcher, captured in the Supersystem. The armor had only sustained superficial damage in that battle, and nanotech had restored it to complete operational status. The armor was able to adjust its own size as long as it had energy, and the Emperor was not that much different in size and build from Watcher.
; Kitticaris backed into the suit, the linkage ports in the base of his skull and his lower back connecting with the modified plugs of the suit. As soon as his arms and legs were in place the outer section of the suit swung closed. The HUD came alive, showing the schematic of the suit as the nano-systems closed the seals, making the seams one solid piece of alloy with no weak points. The red lines on the seams turned green as that function was completed.
The internal systems of the armor powered up, sensors, defensive screens, weapons. The data feed switched from the HUD to the Emperor’s visual and auditory centers, and a Godlike feeling came over him. He flexed his arms, took a couple of steps, and knew that he was unstoppable. Watch that kind of thinking, Alphonso, he thought, recalling that he had used armor like this in the past, before the fall of civilization. And while very tough, it was not invulnerable.
Kitticaris’ mind traveled back through the millennia, when he had been a soldier and spy for the Galactic Empire. Not made to be a leader like Watcher. The Watcher project had been considered a dead end. No, he had been made to be a killer, nothing more, though the immortality gene had also been incorporated into his genome. The Emperor remembered how he had fought in land actions, against people who had tried to revolt against a government that was increasingly unfeeling to their needs and concerns. Those had not really been much of battles, more like slaughters of innocents who thought their revolutionary fervor and philosophy of right on their side would be enough, while they went down in large groups against the superior forces of the Empire. And especially the elite soldiers of Kitticaris’ brothers. Kitticaris, as the best of his kind, had also been assigned missions to assassinate rebel leaders, resulting in the collapse of resistance with less bloodshed than the other possible resolutions. He had been especially proud of those missions.
Yes, he had fought in battles, as well as worked assassinations, the most successful of his kind, until he had been deactivated by a Parliament who had not approved of his creation in the first place, and was angry that such as he had been used by the Emperor. And he had been put in cryo, to sleep through the ages until discovered by the miners of this backwater system, after they had risen back to the level of interplanetary travel.
Deeper and Darker (Deep Dark Well Book 3) Page 32